Set against a three-year severe drought in the Great Yu Dynasty, Wangjia Village, tucked away in remote mountains, suffers from parched farmland and total crop failure. The villagers are gaunt and malnourished, on the verge of starvation. Wang Yue, a kind-hearted village girl, has been sharing her family’s meager saved grain with the more vulnerable, like a poor widow and her daughter. Eventually, she collapses from exhaustion and hunger right at the village entrance. When she regains consciousness, Wang Yue unexpectedly awakens the ability to understand animal speech. She overhears a plump rat muttering about grain stored in a mountain cave. She immediately stops Wang Hu, who is about to beat the rat to death, and strikes a deal: hot steamed buns in exchange for the location of the hidden grain. Led by the fat rat, the whole village treks to the foot of a cliff. Together they push aside a giant rock and uncover a grain stash hidden by bandits. Inside, there are not only mountains of grain but also chests full of gold, silver, and jewels. Rather than taking the fortune and moving her family to the county seat to live in comfort, Wang Yue decides to use the wealth to build up Wangjia Village, so that every villager can live a good life. Wang Yue’s kindness wins her the full support of Village Elder Wang Bo and all the villagers. She first uses the grain to set up a relief porridge station, then launches work-for-food programs to recruit displaced people for road building and house construction, letting disaster victims earn their keep through honest labor. On a trip into the mountains to gather mushrooms, she saves Zhao Ling, the prefect’s son, after he falls into a ravine. With her beast-speaking gift, she tames black bears, wolf packs, and monkeys to form her own animal guard team. She also learns mushroom cultivation techniques from the monkey king Dasheng, securing a long-term profitable industry for the village.
